May 1, 2005

Do you think there are any well-known bloggers with anonymous side blogs? It strikes me as such a tempting thing to do. Once your blog has enough attention, there have to be some things you can think of saying that don't seem to belong on your official blog, burdening your actual name. And you've got to sometimes feel nostalgic for the days when you wrote for yourself, with just a twinge of excitement that somebody might be looking in. If you started such a blog, would Anonymous You link to your Official You, and, if so, would it be with approval or would you take pleasure in attacking yourself? Would Official You link to the anonymous blog, and, if so, would it because Anonymous You got traffic-envy or because -- Plato-like -- you enjoy writing dialogues? Just wondering!

I'm not a "well-known" blogger, but I've thought about it as well. The more I thought about though, the more I realized I have enough trouble keeping my regular blog fresh. There's no way I could keep TWO blogs going. If I did, though, playing devil's advocate against myself would be quite a fun exercise.

I'm definitely not well-known, but I would like to do a liberal blog. I would link to myself because I link to all the Wisconsin political blogs I can find.

But, like portsider, I wonder if I would have time for it. I wanted to do a sports blog but have not really kept up like I would like. I also do a blog on Christianity, but I'm going to limit it to two or three longer posts per week. Then I read and comment on several. And, of course, there's work.

I'm one of those "blogging mommies" tempted to create an anonymous blog my family members and friends don't know about - so I can write about my crazy relatives and friends, voice my frustrations without filtering myself and unleash my inner Bukowski. As it is, I often have to explain my vents and rants to my family members because they are without humor. That gets so old. But I don't have the time to manage two blogs. I went so far as to actually set up an anonymous blog, but I can't recall its URL or my password even.

Anne: that's a very good reason. You have to assume people could find out.

I think there are probably a lot of people with a professional blog and a personal blog. Or a main blog and a very specialized blog. So it doesn't seem that odd that one of the blogs would be anonymous.

I wonder which situations readers of blog 1 object to blog 2. Linking without acknowledging you're the same person? Having an objectionable attitude on the other blog? Writing about the wrong things on the other blog?

Loved your phrasing of "anonymous you" vs. "official you". Made me recall a silly conversation I once had concerning cloning. If both my husband and I each got cloned, would our cloned little selves grow up and fall in love and marry? But then we realized we'd probably we raising ourselves and our clones would be considered brother and sister. And, further, we wondered as we were raising ourselves, weould we even like our own self as the years passed and our traits became more pronounced. Would we end up driving ourselves crazy? Like I said, it was a silly conversation.

Tamar: I agree! The whole idea of being "married" to the first blog already seems to be the beginning of madness. Then, instead of going into the real world and doing things, one thinks of varying life by doing a second blog: that seems like a warning sign. Too much blogging! That said, I used to worry about "overblogging." Now, I really don't!

I'm actually involved with three blogs, each of which has a slightly (but not completely) different flavor.

It's very easy to get caught up with them. The danger I run into is feeling a responsibility to keep them all going (even though two of them are group blogs), which leads to conundrums about where to post this, where to post that. I even feel guilt if I don't post for a while.

All in all, it's been healthy for me, because it's forced me to view blogging as what it is: a hobby.